


It Comes Around Again

by Kgdragoon



Series: Definitely NOT a Spaghetti Western [3]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: ... some things might be broken in the process but stuff is fixed overall, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst and Humor, Blood and Injury, Gratuitous Southwest, Plot necessary OCs, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Trauma, bad language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 06:14:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29837262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kgdragoon/pseuds/Kgdragoon
Summary: The world is in chaos. Overwatch, disbanded.The time to make a difference passed years ago, and McCree is far too old for this time travel business.
Relationships: Ana Amari & Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison, Jesse McCree & Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, Jesse McCree & Winston
Series: Definitely NOT a Spaghetti Western [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2165751
Comments: 7
Kudos: 11





	1. I Hope The Worst Isn’t Over

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [new hope reborn in every tragedy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10559196) by [dancingassassin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancingassassin/pseuds/dancingassassin). 
  * Inspired by [If I could start again, A million miles away, I will keep myself, I would find a way](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15807165) by [JustWaitAndSee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustWaitAndSee/pseuds/JustWaitAndSee). 

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An introduction to the continuing life of one Jesse McCree.
> 
> (not gonna lie, this was totally inspired by the "Mountain Man McCree" skin... just, left to steep in the Southwest - specifically New Mexico).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of my favorite types of story is the "time-travel fix-it", if I loved the story the first time then it's pretty darn satisfying watching characters go back and fix (mostly) everything (after a lot of struggles and hardship - can't make it too easy!). But perhaps as a consequence of this, I tend to loathe stories where time travel happens but nothing is changed.  
> So... I had the idea for this story. I suppose we'll see how it goes!

Jesse carefully steps on the gas pedal, coaxing his rusted old pickup truck further up the incline. The road had gradually been winding its way up for awhile now, and scraggly desert had slowly given way to forested hills and mountains. It was still a bit like stepping into Wonderland, though, when he’d gone through that one tunnel and found that beige rock had changed into stubborn green. But that was Cloudcroft for you… or at least the area around it. 

He really didn’t get out much anymore. If he hadn’t had to go steal back Tracer’s old chronal accelerator, he wouldn’t have gotten out at all. That was the way he preferred it.

He keeps driving, fiddles with the radio a bit, tries to find something, anything to pass the time better than being stuck in his own head. Eventually he finds a station playing real old-timey western music, and it’s rare enough, and strange enough, that he has to stop and listen. He smiles, just a bit, when he recognizes one of the songs. George Strait had always been one of his momma’s favorite singers, and while he hadn’t understood exactly what he’d meant by “this” in “we really shouldn't be doing this”, at least not when he’d first listened to the song, it had still been upbeat enough that he’d enjoyed dancing along to it anyway. He honestly can’t believe it’s still on the radio, so many decades after it’d first come out – this really must be a niche station… either that or they’re having some kind of special event or something. Still, it makes him smile. 

He continues the rest of the drive in peace. Slowly driving higher and higher up. Day crawls into night, the temperature steadily drops, and there’s more snow here than in most of the rest of New Mexico. 

Finally he arrives where he’s supposed to be (where he never should have left) – a small cabin in the woods an hour’s drive outside of anything that can reasonably be called civilization. Jesse slams the truck door behind him and limps his way through the foot high snow. Then he unlocks the door, grabs an armful of logs off the woodpile, and goes on home.

*

Even after stoking the fire and turning on his electric heater, hoping all the while that the solar panels haven’t been snowed over, he shivers the whole night through. Though, ever since he’d hit sixty, that ain’t exactly been new. The nightmares, as always, give him more trouble. He tumbles between memories he’d rather forget and the cold grip of the waking world, ensuring that by the time morning comes around he’ll be both exhausted and more than ready to get on with the day.

It takes a while for him to stop drifting in and out of nightmares, and to wake up properly. By then his head’s full of cotton and his mouth is tacky and stale. The warmth of the blankets should be a comfort, but his skin is still hot to the touch and sour with sweat, and they end up feeling more stifling than anything. He burrows in deeper, just for a moment, thinking about all the things he has to do for the day; torn between wanting to put it off as long as possible and doing whatever he can to escape from his own damned head. After a moment he sighs and manages to extract himself from his bed, though once he’s out in the cold air of his cabin his leg immediately starts acting up. It seizes and aches, right down to his bones, and he curses Reaper again. The thing is, he still don’t know if it had been cruelty or kindness that had made him do it – if shooting him point blank in the knee and maiming him for life had been meant to keep him safe off the field, or if it’d just been meant to **hurt**. Either way, it’d worked. 

Once he’s up, the first thing he does is check the heater – it’s still chugging along, it’s the fireplace that’s gone out, and he gets to restarting the fire. Then he goes about the rest of his routine – food on the table, socks that need mending, adjusting his knee brace, more wood for the fire, until there is only one thing left to do. He finds himself outside, in the middle of a frigid afternoon, sitting on a rickety wooden bench with the wood axe beside him, staring at Tracer’s chronal accelerator on an old stump in front of him. Whoever’d stolen it seemed to want to mess with time travel, if the amateur science lab had been anything to go by. Jesse knows that things had gone bad, but he can only imagine how they could’ve gone worse in the hands of people like that. No, he can’t even risk it. Which means there's just the one thing left to do.

“Sorry Lena,” he whispers, hoping that wherever she is she can hear him. He stands, favoring his bad leg, then lines up the axe, and swings. The axe glances off the faintly glowing crystal at the center of the harness without leaving so much as a scratch. He tries again, with the same result.

Well, he didn’t want to have to do this, but it looks like the only way. He pulls out his gun, Not-Peacekeeper, takes aim, and fires. The chronal accelerator remains unscathed. Dammit Winston. Of course he’d had to go and make it near indestructible – great for Lena then, not so great for him now. But if this doesn't work he doesn't reckon he's got anything else that he can use, so he fires again, and again, and again, until it finally… _cracks_. 

Well, he’d thought it’d be more dramatic than that. Maybe he didn’t do it right?

The crack keeps spreading, slowly & audibly, like a too hot glass that’d been put on a too cold counter. He’d know the sound, had heard it before, and can clearly remember how it'd been immediately followed by a little beaker in Mei’s lab splitting clean in two and spilling chemicals all over the counter.

“Oh shit,” he says, still staring at the little glowing light and the crack making its way closer to the edge.

He throws himself to the ground just before the device fails catastrophically, and the entire thing explodes in blinding turquoise light and an unnerving absence of sound.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, so many songs crept in during the writing of this...
> 
> At the start of this, I thought it'd be neat to have each of the chapter titles be lyrics from the song “no children” by the mountain goats. Hopefully that'll pan out.
> 
> In this chapter, I also make references to "We Really Shouldn't Be Doing This" by George Strait (for all the western fans out there); and also "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" by Nirvana... though that was much subtler. I did not plan on including them... they really did just creep in.


	2. I Hope the Rising Black Smoke Carries Me Far Away (and I Never Come Back to This Town Again)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jesse wakes up. He isn't where he last remembers... and, well, time travel wouldn't be the weirdest explanation he's ever heard.
> 
> So he plots...  
> there are pins involved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized that the original Chapters 2 & 3 were too short, so I decided to combine them together.

It was the itching that woke him up. The grass underneath his chin. The warmth on the back of his neck. The critter, slowly crawling across his nose. He blinks and sees green and brown. His battered stetson slowly comes into focus, the nick in the brim of his hat visible even through the grass in front of him. He swats the bug off his nose and slowly picks himself up off the ground.

He definitely ain’t where he was before. The trees are the wrong sort, for one. The grass is too thick and green. The sky blue, streaked with wispy clouds, and the air humming with the warmth of summer and the beating wings of countless insects. He dusts off his hat, places it back on his head, and takes stock of himself – he has his gun, so probably not a kidnapping; he also ain’t hurt, beyond a headache and a queasy stomach, which supports the whole not-kidnapped conclusion. His cybernetic arm’s still working fine, so whatever it was, it probably wasn’t… the memory hits him over the head. Thugs with Tracer’s chronal accelerator, stealing it back, shooting it… god he’s such an idiot. 

But now that he’s bothered lookin’ around, this view seems awful familiar…

Switzerland.  
Zürich.

That’s right about when he thinks to turn around… it can’t be, he remembers watching Overwatch’s Swiss Headquarters get destroyed on live TV. Remembers the gut churning guilt, horror, and the devastating casualty reports that came after:  
Morrison.  
… Reyes.

Well now that he’s thinking about it, it probably ain’t impossible. After all, people build museums to shit all the time. And he doesn’t even know if the building is in one piece – all the damage could be on the other side… no, that probably ain’t it, that’s just dumb wishful thinking. But the museum idea could still hold up.

Or it could be time travel.

He did just break an important, time related doohickey. It even makes sense that he’d be brought here: Winston probably would’ve built a fail-safe into Tracer’s harness, made it so that if it broke she’d be teleported to an Overwatch facility and Winston could fix it. Really, now that he thinks about it, that does seem to be the most likely explanation. The only question left, is just ‘when’ in time he is. It’s entirely possible he didn’t time travel at all. Or even traveled back too far. What if Overwatch is brand new? What if Reyes doesn’t recognize him?

The idea of hiding himself away and not changing the future never even occurs to him. Now that he’s back, he is going to do his level best to fix things, even if it ain’t particularly nice and pretty like.

The thing is – he knows all the time travel theories. He’d watched enough science fiction, and even read a few physics papers, to know about the butterfly effect, the grandfather paradox, and even “closed time-like curves” where you can’t change anything no matter what you do. He also knows about all the explanations in-between, which tend to imply the existence of a multiverse. He knows which theories he prefers; can even hazard a guess what’ll happen. He knows he’s got to try anyway. 

And so he sits and waits for the guards to come collect him. ‘Cause there ain’t no universe where Overwatch is dumb enough to miss someone sitting right on their doorstep, and even if he wanted to, he reckons it’s too late to back out now.

*

Jesse finds himself surrounded by the most thuggish group of Overwatch agents he’s ever had the displeasure of being arrested by. If he hadn’t recognized Nilsen, he’d’ve thought he was in some alternate timeline. Fortunately, with Nilsen being there, he can narrow down the date a bit. Unfortunately, he can only do that because Nilsen is both a bastard and a Talon plant, who’d only joined Overwatch a couple years before it fell. The reminder of the Talon infestation ain’t exactly welcome, it’s certainly uncomfortable, but it’s probably well needed. 

Still, he’d hoped Reyes would be one of the people to come take him in. That would’ve been so much easier and he’d’ve been able to skip all the careful planning stuff he wasn’t too fond of. Hopefully Reyes is on base and not out on some mission- he has more access than nearly anyone else, and the mind to take care of any of the problems Jesse could bring up. Jesse also knows him well enough to stand a shot at convincing him to listen. But on the other hand… he did lose his damn mind at some point, and Jesse doesn’t know exactly when it happened. For all he knows, this Reyes could be beyond reason.

Still, Reyes’ll want to have a talk with him, once he hears about an old Jesse McCree kickin’ about, so a confrontation might just be inevitable.

To be completely honest, Jesse doesn’t know how he’ll react to seeing Reyes again. He hopes he can keep his temper. He’s had years of practice after all… still, maybe he really ain’t the best person to talk to…

No, who he really needs to talk to is Ana Amari. All the benefits of one Gabriel Reyes and none of the downsides… except for the lecture she’ll probably give him. 

… Maybe he can talk to Morrison – sure, they may not like each other, but the worst he’s liable to be is punched.

… Maybe he should try Winston instead. Even if he ain’t real knowledgeable about digging out spies and stopping crazy terrorist groups, at least he’ll know about time travel. And Jesse might just get out of this without a bruised jaw or a disappointed mom lecture.

*

They take his gun. His phone. His hat. The dagger hidden in his boot. Hell, they even take his belt. He hopes they don’t make off with his BAMF buckle, he really is fond of it.

Then they sit him in some generic interrogation room and cuff his arms to the table. They don’t even use the good cuffs either. It’s a mite insulting, like they don’t even think he’s worth their time. At the very least it’s clear they don’t have a clue who they're dealing with.

They didn’t even notice the safety pin he’d clipped to the inside of his boot. They also didn’t bother shackling his feet. He could’ve gotten out of this mess when he was twenty, and he sure as hell can now that he’s sixty-five. It’s worse than a rookie mistake, it’s just plain sloppy. 

He lounges back, thinks about picking locks, and carefully avoids thinking about Gabriel Reyes and his shotguns. And he waits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For whatever reason, writing shorter chapters seems to be easier for me right now... that has been the case for this entire series :/
> 
> Also, it just occurred to me, but here are the references I dug up, if anyone was interested in the couple of science-y things I mentioned in these first two chapters (I didn't want to just pull stuff out of nowhere and be completely inaccurate :] ) -  
> **About Solar Panels in Snow: https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/let-it-snow-how-solar-panels-can-thrive-winter-weather 
> 
> **About Time Travel: https://thenextweb.com/insights/2020/09/25/physicist-says-you-can-time-travel-all-you-want-but-the-universe-wont-let-you-change-things/


	3. I Hope When You Think of Me Years Down the Line, You Can’t Find One Good Thing to Say

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jesse can and will run (figurative) circles around Overwatch agents.  
> Winston eventually shows up and regrets his life decisions.

After letting him stew for a couple hours in an empty interrogation room, someone finally decides he’s sat there long enough and comes to talk to him. She’s an agent he doesn’t recognize, Overwatch probably. She introduces herself as “Agent Alice”, which honestly, what the fuck? 

Jesse’s entirely sure that if anyone had tried to call Reyes “Agent Gabriel” he’d’ve slapped them upside the head, called them a pendejo, and told them to get back to work.

“What are you doing here?” Agent Alice says. And wow, okay, no beating around the bush today.

“Well to be completely honest, I got lost.”

“You… got lost?”

“Yup.”

“In the middle of an Overwatch facility?”

“Well I really wouldn’t call it the **middle** …”

Agent Alice scowls. “You made it past fences, security cameras, and guard patrols, all without being detected. Without leaving so much as a trace. And you honestly expect me to believe that you just ‘got lost’?”

"You know how it goes – one moment you’re sitting outside your cozy little cabin, enjoying the sunshine, and the next you’ve found yourself knee-deep in the headquarters of a high security, international military agency.”

“Cut the crap!” she yells, slamming her hands down on the table for dramatic effect. She pauses, clearly listening to her earpiece, and her eye twitches. “The arresting agents didn’t take your name.” She deadpans, but Jesse can tell that she’s dying instead, just a little.

“Nope,” he says, obnoxiously popping the ‘p’.

Her eye twitches just a little more.

“Well? What is your name?” she asks, and clearly doesn’t expect a straight answer from him.

“Aww sugar, you know I can’t tell you that,” Jesse says, dialing his McCree charm up to 11. And by ‘McCree charm’, he of course means the uncanny ability to drive perfectly ordinary people into a murderous rage.

For a moment, her mask slips and she does, in fact, look like she’s contemplating fratricide. “Don’t. Call me. Sugar.” 

Jesse feels a deep well of satisfaction, because **this** he’s had plenty of experience handling. Throwing someone off their game. That’s just Interrogation 101. 

“Sorry about that,” he acquiesces. “How about this – if you can do this one thing for me, I promise I’ll sing like a bird.”

She looks rightfully skeptical, but she motions for him to go on, and so he does.

“Let me talk to someone else,” Jesse says, and when it looks like she’s about to protest, he drops the bomb. “I’d be willing to talk to Gabriel Reyes, if you can spare him,” he says, and he wonders if Reyes is one of the people behind the dark interrogation window, or if he couldn’t be bothered with a lowly trespasser.

The shock on her face is palpable. And Jesse ponders the likelihood of Overwatch sending a rookie to interrogate him. Either that or he’s gotten a mite better at this in the last thirty years.

“If not, I understand, he’s a busy man and all,” Jesse drawls, really playing up his Southwest accent. “But I’d be amenable to speaking with Ana Amari-”

“You haven’t heard?” she says, effectively interrupting him.

“Heard what?”

“Ana Amari was killed in action.”

That is simultaneously the best and worst news he’s heard since coming back in time. On the one hand, now he can narrow down the date to within a handful of months. On the other, it means he’s too late to save a whole lot of people. Including the Lacroixs. He hopes he also ain’t too late to save Dr. Mina Liao, but at this point he ain’t holding his breath.

“That’s a right shame,” he says carefully, still playing up the accent, trying to inject just enough skepticism to catch the attention of anyone who’s bothering to listen for it. “Well, I suppose I’ll settle for talking with McCree,” he says, and now he’s just plain fishing. He really, truly, honestly does not want to talk with mini McCree.

“He left the agency last month,” Agent Alice supplies.

Fuck.

“Damn,” - he whistles - “you Overwatch folk seem to be dropping like flies,” he says, again hoping he pings **someone’s** suspicion meter (and that that someone isn’t a Talon operative). “Hmm… well how about Winston? Surely he’s still around.”

And that seems to catch Agent Alice flatfooted (again), she blinks rapidly and angles her face, ever-so-slightly towards the door, probably listening to whatever chatter’s going on through her earpiece. “Winston… you want to talk to… Winston?”

“Yep. Winston. Just Winston, mind you, no surname or nothin’.”

“…And you’ll tell him everything?” she says slowly, her skepticism palpable.

“Cross my heart,” he says, and makes a small crossing motion with his index finger; tries to slip just a bit of sincere charm into the expression.

She studies him carefully, her eyebrows drawn in contemplation. Either she finds whatever it is she’s looking for, or she gets the go-ahead from whoever’s on her earpiece, because she nods and says, “Alright. We’ll discuss your terms.”

“You should be prepared to provide your statement in writing,” she advises.

Jesse’s eyebrow ticks upward. He wonders what the trial would be like if they tried to charge him with trespassing via accidental time travel. And then he has to fight to keep the humor off his face.

Another agent steps into the room, before Agent Alice has event left. He nods to her, and gives a brief acknowledgment. “Agent Bohner.”

Jesse’s other eyebrow climbs up his forehead and he desperately stuffs the urge to laugh in a suitcase in the back of his mind. He is a professional after all. Though, that does explain why she goes by Agent Alice… 

“I told you to call me Alice,” she whispers to the new guy, loud enough that McCree can hear it (which, at least in his mind, kinda defeats the whole point of whispering).

“Sorry ma’am,” the new guy says, his smile too smarmy to be genuine. “I was instructed to bring the prisoner a bottle of water. As protocol dictates.”

Oh yeah, Jesse knows all about “protocol”, and how this one just-so-happens to result in free fingerprints and DNA for forensics to go through.

Agent Alice leaves with her jaw clenched so tightly that she probably can't speak. Agent smarm-face sets the water bottle on the table in front of him and then has the sheer **gall** to give him the same damn smile. Jesse leans back in his chair, watching him all the while, and waits. It barely takes a minute before that smarmy smile slides off his face. The man glances at the water bottle, then at Jesse.

“I’ll leave you to it then,” he says, giving Jesse one last look before hurrying out of the room.

Jesse really hopes Winston gets here soon, because he can’t take much more of these people.

*

In a rare bit of luck, he doesn’t have to wait long at all. Winston must’ve been curious about some stranger showing up and asking to speak with him, of all people. Jesse ain’t all that surprised – he’s found that if you want to get a scientist to move, you just gotta pique their curiosity some. He still can’t help the small smile that comes through when he looks up and locks eyes with one 7 foot tall gorilla who looks like he’s just been hit upside the head with a newspaper. Winston just stares at him with that same gobsmacked expression, and Jesse ain’t entirely sure what to make of it. Is he surprised that Jesse **ain’t** surprised to see him, that he ain’t even gawkin’ at him? Or maybe that rabbit-quick brain of his has already started to put things together. Jesse wouldn’t be shocked if that were the case – Winston is Overwatch’s smartest scientist. 

“Better believe I ain’t exaggeratin’ when I say you’re a sight for sore eyes,” Jesse says, in lieu of a greeting. “Winston.”

“You know me.”

“Well o’ course – it’d be strange to ask to speak to someone you don’t even know, don’t ya think?” 

“Yes, but nothing about this situation seems to be remotely normal,” Winston says, stepping forward until he’s just beside the table, carefully keeping Jesse in full view of the cameras and the interrogation window.

“I’ve gotta ask – just what conclusions did you come to, just now?” Jesse asks, leaning forward so that his forearms are braced on the table in front of him, and gives Winston his most piercing and most mischievous stare.

Winston momentarily looks taken aback, but he recovers quick enough. “You… you have some relation to former agent McCree, do you not?”

Ah, so that’s it.

“You could say that,” Jesse concedes, though judging by the expression on Winston’s face, it isn’t what he wanted to hear.

“Agent McCree’s file only mentioned a mother. Would I be correct in assuming you’re his birth father?”

That isn’t quite the conclusion Jesse expected him to come to, though in hindsight he probably should have. Still, just thinking that he could be mistaken for that good-for-nothing really sets his teeth on edge. And some of that must shine through, in spite of his hard fought control, because Winston sits back and clearly starts to reassess his conclusion.

Jesse really doesn’t want to be mistaken for some long lost uncle next, so he decides to cut that train of thought off at the pass. “Naw, at least I’d like to think I’m a better man than that bastard. Though I guess if you really wanted to, you could get Dr. Ziegler to test my blood. But personally I don’t think that’d be the best use of your time.”

Winston falls for the obvious bait – hook, line, and sinker. “No? Then what do you think would be a better use of my time?”

“Hmm…” he makes a show of pretending to think it over. “You know that doohickey you built for Lena?” He gives it a moment to sink in, but not quite enough for even someone as smart as Winston to jump to the right conclusion. “Well I reckon the failsafe might need a bit of fine tuning. Want to make sure no one accidentally ends up in the wrong time and place, if you catch my meaning.”

He probably could’ve been more subtle, but he wanted to be absolutely sure that there wouldn’t be more misunderstandings. And ‘Lena’s doohickey’ was an obscure enough reference that not everyone and their mother would immediately cotton on… hopefully.

Winston’s eyes go wide, and then he’s studying Jesse like he wants to put him under a microscope. Jesse would feel uncomfortable, if he hadn’t seen the expression enough times to be immune. He doesn’t even fidget when Winston’s eyes go over his prosthetic arm, the scar on his jaw, or his knee brace, though that last one is close. 

“McCree… you’re Jesse McCree…” Winston says it like he ain’t entirely sure, and he wants it confirmed out loud.

“Alive and kickin’,” Jesse replies, trying to recall some of his old charm – it ain’t easy, and he’s pretty sure it don’t come out right – that part of him’s been gone for awhile now, more or less since the time he was lamed. Either that or about when Overwatch 2.0 went under. So, nearly thirty years.

“I’ll have to take… I’ll have to take readings. For confirmation” Winston says, the last part almost like an afterthought, his mind so clearly spinning in circles. “May I ask how this happened? What were you doing in possession of Lena’s chronal accelerator?”

Jesse winces – well there goes subtlety. Hopefully no one of the Talon persuasion is listening in. Then, Jesse sighs, long and low, and starts from the beginning. He doesn’t tell Winston everything, only what he absolutely needs to know. And some things… well he reckons Winston won’t blame him for keeping them to himself.

*

He tells Winston about Reyes losing his mind, about the reports of some kind of infighting inside Overwatch that had led to its first destruction. But when he gets to the part about the Overwatch Recall, he just can’t bring himself to tell him how Reaper used to be Reyes. He doesn’t try to get around the questions of what’d happened to his arm, his face, and his leg, though: first bounty, gone to hell; injured trying to reclaim Peacekeeper (it hadn’t worked, when they realized his gun wasn’t special, they’d melted it down out of spite); and lastly, Reaper, shooting him pointblank in the knee with his shotgun.

He makes sure to cover all the other important bits too. Like how Ana Amari was still alive, how she’d been saved by an old friend in the Egyptian military, and could probably use some help. How Amelie Lacroix had been brainwashed, and how she would be used to kill Tekhartha Mondatta and spark more fighting with omnics. How deeply Talon had infiltrated Blackwatch, and even Overwatch, and how Moira might very well be on their payroll already. 

Stuff like that.

And when he finds out the exact date… well, Jesse can’t help but mention the fact that Blackwatch’s former agent McCree was, as they speak, currently in the business of having a heatstroke in the middle of the Chihuahuan desert, and if Overwatch could maybe go send someone to get him he’d really be much obliged.

By the time Jesse stops talking, Winston looks shaken and more than just a little bit afraid. And Jesse feels bad about having to put that fear there, but it’s necessary. He hopes that now, between the two of them, they can figure out how to stop his future from happening. How to stop Talon from winning. How to save everyone he ever gave a damn about from either dying or being too beat-down to care. And, if he’s feeling particularly self-important – how to save the entire damned world.


	4. And I Hope You Blink Before I Do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jesse has a talk with Jack Morrison, and quickly remembers how much he dislikes him.

In the end, they do send Dr. Ziegler to take samples of his blood, and Winston does get to run all his tests from the dubious privacy of the interrogation room (because of course they don’t trust him just yet – he wouldn’t trust himself either). The results come back within the hour and show that he is, in fact, Jesse McCree from the future. All in all, he thinks he’s being a real good sport about all this, considering the number of needles and flashing lights they subject him to. 

Then Jack Morrison has to come and ruin all the fun. Or, alternately, he comes and rescues Jesse from being a science experiment. When he walks through the door, Jesse tries to muster up some of the cold regard he’d had for the man when he was in his twenties, but it just doesn’t come. There’s a unique feeling of relief in seeing someone alive and well when he’d last seen them cold and dead. Of course Morrison notices, even seems thrown by the unusually warm smile. 

“Well if it ain’t Jack Morrison in the flesh, come to speak to Overwatch’s newest asset himself,” Jesse drawls, trying to break the awkward silence (and there’s some of that old vitriol again, he’d wondered where it’d went). 

Morrison still clearly doesn’t know what to make of it, and just stands there in front of him with an increasingly perplexed scowl on his face. Wasting a perfectly good opportunity to **not** being doing that. 

Really, what does Jesse have to do to stop this?  
It’s getting downright uncomfortable.

“You’re McCree.” Finally Morrison decides to speak. Too bad it’s such a dumb thing to say that Jesse doesn’t know how to respond to it and keep the conversation going. He isn’t even sure if it was meant to be a question or a statement.

“Last I checked,” he says, settling on something equally inane. “Last the doctors checked too. They just left, if you wanted to confirm my McCree-ness,” he adds, finally finding something appropriately smartass-y enough to say. He really is out of practice.

“That… won’t be necessary,” Morrison replies, and now he’s studying Jesse, even though he almost certainly did that when he was on the other side of the window, or when he was reviewing the tapes from the ‘interrogation’. His eyes settle on Jesse’s fake arm… and wow, Jesse suddenly remembers how punchable Morrison is.

“Did you want somethin’?” Jesse asks, letting just a bit more of his accent slip through – a reminder, or a threat.

That does it – Morrison’s eyes slide right back up to Jesse’s face. “Yes,” he says, earnestly. “We need to go through some of the details of your report, and discuss what’ll happen next.” He uncuffs Jesse as he says this, and while there’s a specter of something darker behind his eyes, he doesn’t say it unkindly. 

Jesse wonders at that. Thinks it might spell a world of pain for anyone who happens to be Talon in the near future. He also kind of hates that Morrison can still be so nice to a bearer of such bad news. He doesn’t really know why, but no matter what he does, Morrison always seems to rub him the wrong way. It ain’t fair, and it don’t make sense, but it is what it is. Oil and water just don’t like to mix.

Jesse waits for the inevitable questions trying to pry information that he just ain’t ready to part with. As with most of his dealings with Morrison, he doesn’t quite get what he’s expecting.

“So, as of right now, the plan is for you to move into one of Overwatch’s guest quarters,” he says, and then hurries to reassure him, “just until our problem is taken care of. Then we can look into getting you official documentation, which would afford you the ability to move around freely and legally obtain a job.”

He says it like it’s ever been a problem for Jesse before. It ain’t. But he does sound so earnest when he says it.

Morrison seems to realize that Jesse is less than impressed, but as usual he doesn’t quite manage to figure out the ‘why’. “Really, it’ll only be temporary. Shouldn’t take more than a few weeks at most. And we’ll provide a cover story, so you won’t have to worry about having to interact with anyone in the meantime.”

Because that’s what he’s worried about. Instead of the infestation of insane murderers who would have a vested interest in him not being alive and talking (if they ever find out the truth about him). For being a super-soldier and the face of Overwatch and all, Jack Morrison really ain’t all that bright.

And does Morrison really think he’s that anti-social? Has the man never paid him **any** mind? Or maybe Jesse’d just been more of a brat than he remembers.

“That’s fine with me,” he says, hoping it’ll be enough to reassure the guy and let this conversation **end**. It ain’t.

“Er… right. Okay. Then we can move on to our next order of business,” Morrison says, leans back, studies Jesse just a bit more. “I noticed a few… gaps in information in the statement you provided, and I was hoping that we could go over them and try to fill them in.”

Damn.

While he didn’t think Winston would begrudge him his secrets, he knows that Morrison sure as hell will.

“Firstly, there’s the matter of this ‘Reaper’,” Morrison says, unintentionally going straight for the jugular (and Gabriel Reyes), as always. “There’s hardly any information pertaining to him. Other than the clear evidence of scientific experimentation, the use of shotguns, and his distinctive outfit, the rest of the file is empty. No name, no other aliases, no physical description, no background at all.”

“Now, I would imagine that you would’ve wanted to know more about the man that purposefully shot you in the leg and ended your career,” he continues, and the way he says it leaves precisely zero room for anything but an explanation.

Jesse works his jaw a bit, an old, thoughtless gesture of annoyance, and a tell about a mile wide for anyone who’s looking.

“It don’t matter no more,” Jesse grits out. “I came back. I don’t think he’ll be givin’ you any trouble.”

“So, he’s one of the people who’ve infiltrated Overwatch,” Morrison says.

Jesse’s never been happier to have someone so consistently jump to the wrong conclusions. He can work with this.

“Yeah,” he confirms, throwing in a heaping of reluctance to sell that it’s real (because if there are rules about lying, the 2nd would be to **sell** it like you mean it). “Near about died in the explosion that took out this very HQ. Ended up Moira’s lab rat. From what I understand, he didn’t exactly volunteer, and whatever she did to him left him with more than a few screws loose,” (rule 1, of course, would be to make your lie have a basis of truth).

Morrison gains that familiar look of stubborn determination, and nearly launches the chair back in his haste to get up from it. “Then you’re right - we can stop that monster before he becomes a problem and deprive Talon of an extremely dangerous asset in the process. Thank you!” he says, mind clearly elsewhere as he all but dashes out of the room.

Jesse gets the feeling that he’s forgotten a few little things. Like asking all the questions he’d meant to. And letting Jesse out of the room. He tries the door – of course it’s locked.

He sighs, sits back down, throws his feet up on the table – or more like tries to, his bum leg ain’t real keen on cooperating – and then he gets back to waiting. He really hopes someone remembers him soon. This interrogation room is gettin’ mighty boring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hmm... I wasn't a huge fan of this chapter, especially the beginning, but I got through it.


	5. The Dumb Few That Forgave Us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jesse gets the chance to speak with an old friend.

When Reyes steps through the door a short while later, Jesse begins to suspect that leaving him here was deliberate.

“So you’re supposed to be Jesse McCree, from the future.” He doesn’t say it like a question; there isn’t even real skepticism to it, it’s something more like derision.

“Jefe.” Jesse greets him with a nod that would’ve looked much better with his stetson on. It’s almost funny that after all this time, and all he’s been through, he still thinks of Gabriel Reyes as his boss.

After Jesse’s greeting, there’s something in Reyes’s eyes that he can’t place. It could be anything from loathing to fondness. Maybe it’s both. He’s always been a complex guy like that. Still, Jesse knows better than to comment on it, so instead he sits still and suffers through another round of scrutiny. When Reyes’s eyes pass over the scars on his face, his expression says ‘expected’. When his eyes fall to his metal arm, it says ‘pain’ and maybe even ‘regret’ or ‘guilt’. But when his eyes finally land on that annoyingly conspicuous knee-brace, he grits his teeth and scowls. For him that could mean anything from deep thought to incandescent fury.

He works his jaw loose, and Jesse suddenly realizes that he picked up one of his most annoying tells from Reyes, which just figures. 

“Reaper,” Reyes growls. Just that. No follow up. No comment. Jesse is just a bit unnerved. He really hopes Reyes doesn't go try to hunt Reaper down...

“You said you were shot at point blank range by a shotgun. You should’ve lost the leg,” Reyes says, and Jesse feels a swell of sick anticipation.

“I’m lucky like that,” he replies, even though it hadn’t been a question.

Reyes purses his lips and gets that look on his face like he wants to tell Jesse off for his smart mouth. And some old, shriveled part of him just **aches**. He’d missed it, missed this, ever since he’d left. Not that he’d ever say it though – too sentimental.

“It was me, wasn’t it?” Reyes asks.

And Jesse can’t believe his ears. Can’t believe he asked that. He looks to Reyes, uncertain, but trying to school his face into something like ‘unimpressed’.

“I’m the one who shot you in the leg. I’m Reaper.”

“No. No, you ain’t,” he tries to say it confidently, but he can see that Reyes doesn’t believe him, won’t believe him, so he concedes, “Not yet.”

Reyes slumps like his strings’ve been cut, and Jesse knows that look of self hatred and blame… and even that regret. He doesn’t know what to say to make it better though. Doesn’t even know if the words exist. So instead he stays sitting quietly, waiting for Reyes to think things through and come to whatever conclusions he needs to.

“It won’t happen again,” he says after an indeterminate amount of time. “You’ve given us the chance we needed to change things.”

The determination and resolve are so similar to Morrison that it’s uncanny. And this was something else he’d never quite pieced together – that it was their similarities that’d caused the friction between them, instead of their differences. How would he have known, though, when the two were like night and day.

“Yeah, yeah I reckon we can,” Jesse replies, another small smile tugging at his lips – he thinks he’s smiled more today than he has in the past decade.

“You wouldn’t be interested in helping us clear out some Talon scum, would you?”

“Thought you’d never ask,” Jesse replies, and their smiles mirror each other – just a bit too many teeth.

“Well then, let’s get to it,” Reyes says, motioning to the door.

Jesse gets up to follow him. Reyes opens the door, turns back to Jesse to make some quip, like old times. Over his shoulder, Jesse sees the man with the gun pointed in their direction.

Well, it looks like Talon had heard about the resident time traveler after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally going to be part of the last chapter, but I felt like they needed their own separate chapters.


	6. It Bleeds All Day Long

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reyes has had a long day... a long life really. It gets a bit tiring after awhile.

Gabriel sits beside McCree’s bedside, studying his face like he might disappear at any moment.  
When McCree wakes up, he just might.

They’d found him in the desert, exactly where they’d been told to look. One foot in the grave: well on his way to a heatstroke, and his arm… Gabriel still has to keep himself from staring down at the stump. He tries not to think about what it’d looked like when they’d first found him; or how, for one moment, he’d been sure McCree was dead; or how McCree had stared up at him, delirious, and whispered “muerte,” and Gabriel had had to reassure him that no, he wasn’t dead, and wasn’t going to die if he could help it. He thinks, instead, about the uncomfortable process of fitting a prosthetic, of the painfully long physical therapy, and then his mind stubbornly drifts and imagines McCree going through it alone.

It makes him want to tear down the world, just a little bit. He knows he can’t, though, it just wouldn’t be practical. But he can tear down Talon instead. They’d already made headway on that end. Funny enough, it had been Jack’s plan. It went something like this – they’d temporarily shut down Overwatch, then make a very public show of restructuring the organization, of cleaning things up and cooperating with the United Nations. And sure, they’d do all that. Play nice. But outside the prying eye of the public, they had already started methodically going through every single one of their personnel and separating out the traitors. There were files, and lists, and even honest-to-god corkboards covered in scraps of information relating to Talon, making connections that even future McCree couldn’t have known about. And slowly but surely they’d begun to systematically root out the rot.

Fucking Moira. 

He knew he shouldn’t have trusted her; shouldn’t have hired her. But he’d wanted to understand what the fuck the military had done to him, and she was the only one willing to touch that with a ten foot pole. So he’d let her in anyway and he was twice as poor for it.

It had been Olivia – or, as she preferred to be called, Sombra – that had dug deep enough to find Moira’s cleverly hidden secrets. That had been another smart recommendation from future McCree, he’d even gone so far as to suggest exactly how they go about recruiting her, and it had worked precisely as well as catching flies with honey. Apparently playing to a former gang member’s sense of justice was becoming a theme. Still, she’d been indispensable, and it almost made up for just how annoying she could be.

He sighs, pulls off his beanie, and gives in to the urge to scrub at his face. He’s tired. Has been tired for so long, at this point he thinks that the only thing that’s been keeping him going is spite, and probably anger.

He sighs again, puts his beanie back on, and goes back to staring at the unconscious Jesse McCree. Then, after that becomes unbearable, he gives in to the impulse to reach forward and take his hand. He grips it carefully, his finger on the pulse-point at the wrist, and lets the contact reassure him that McCree is still alive.

*

Four days ago Gabriel had dismissed the call about the intruder and left the guards to handle it. Probably just another reporter or dumb teenager. He didn’t expect any of what came next.

He watched the man who so clearly looked like McCree’s father that he had to fight the impulse to go down there and deck him. They even favored similar weapons – go figure. The belt buckle, on the other hand, deeply concerned him: it was worn, sure, but he’d recognize it anywhere; it wasn’t just **like** McCree’s belt buckle, it **was** McCree’s belt buckle. And at that point he’d really had to fight to keep himself from going down to the interrogation room and **making** this stranger tell him where McCree was and what he had done to him. But first and foremost Gabriel was a consummate soldier and a pragmatist, and if he was actually willing to tell everything to Winston (which he highly doubted), then he was willing to see how this played out first. He was skeptical about the claims of time travel, though, and had called Ziegler before the man even finished speaking. 

Everything this ‘future McCree’ had to say… it was a lot. Gabriel was glad that Winston had had the foresight to ask for a written statement. It sure made the long list of names easier to go through, if nothing else. As he and Morrison studied the interview, they planned what to do next, and, for the first time in years, they were on exactly the same page. It was strange, not being at Morrison’s throat, for a change. A bit unsettling. He was mostly okay with it.

He was less okay with the nagging suspicion that he turned into this ‘Reaper’ character, in this older McCree’s timeline. A part of him railed against the idea that he’d indiscriminately hurt people. That he’d purposefully maim McCree. Another part of him calmly connected dots between the present him and this possible future: the anger he had to keep in check every day, the constrained violence, the pragmatism. It was still hard to reconcile with the fact that he would ever truly hurt his McCree, even if he’d done it to keep him from getting killed, it was still almost unthinkable (not as unthinkable as he’d like).

Finally, it was his turn to talk to old McCree. He had looked forward to it and dreaded it, more or less equally. But they soon fell into something like their familiar rhythm, even if it was strained and artificial – both of them trying to recreate the steps of a dance they were long out of practice in. He’ll never admit, not even to his dying breath, that his heart melted just a little when McCree called him Boss again; that he breathed just a little easier. Because he’d missed this, this smart-ass punk. Had worried, and raged, and hadn’t realized how much he was losing himself, every day a bit more, until this pendejo came back into his life and upended it just as thoroughly as he’d done the first time.

There’s a moment when they were in perfect agreement. When they both smiled the same vicious sort of smile. Their purposes aligned. And Reyes realized that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d really smiled, and he’d hoped that McCree didn’t leave again. He goes ahead of McCree – not standard procedure for escorting a prisoner – but some part of him trusted this older McCree to watch his back, in the same way Gabriel had trusted his McCree (who’d never let him down, except in that moment when he’d left). In the next moment when he was suddenly, roughly, shoved aside, he wondered if that trust was misplaced. The gunshots said ‘no’.

He started shouting out orders before he’d even regained his balance, and agents rushed to arrest the man (Talon probably, even if he looked like Overwatch).

When he turned around, a part of him had expected to find a wrecked interrogation room, bullet holes in the wall, and an old, grey McCree preparing to crack jokes about another near-death experience. The other part of him, the pessimist, had imagined a very different result. He still wasn’t prepared for the sight of blood dyeing McCree’s shirt red, or for the stunned look on his face just before his leg gave out and he collapsed. Gabriel rushed to catch him before he hit the ground, calling for a medic and ‘someone get Ziegler here, now!’.

He tried to staunch the bleeding, but it was too much, and one of the bullets must have nicked a lung, and… 

“Stop being an idiot, Jefe, it’s too late,” McCree said, sounding resigned and tired, as tired as Gabriel felt.

“Shut it, rookie, I’m not letting you die,” Gabriel growled, pressing down harder.

McCree grimaced. He turned to the side and coughed up a spray of blood. His hand clenched and then released. And then he turned back to look at Gabriel. “You know, when I first came back, I figured I wouldn’t last long. Had that feeling... like I was at the end of the line.”

Gabriel scowled. “You aren’t dying on me McCree,” he snarled.

McCree laughed, too soft and short; it still brought up blood. “Glad I got to come back though. See y’all again. Get to make things as right as I could…" And then, like it was a terrible secret of vital importance, he admitted, "I missed this. Every single moment since I left, I missed this.” 

And then he smiled, an echo of that old, ironic, devil-may-care smile. “You know, I never did say goodbye,” he whispered, before all the tension left his body.

Gabriel sat, unmoving, completely stunned in a very un-Reyes-like way. The moment was only broken by the medics rushing into the room. Someone took him by the shoulders (Jack, it was Jack) and spoke urgently at him, but he couldn’t make out a word he said, even when the urgency changed to concern. He was still laser-focused on the medics, and so he noticed when one of them looked over and shook their head. He knew what it meant. Had seen it enough times. Someone, who might have been him, whispered, “vaya con dios.” 

He promised himself that the next time they met, they would make the time for a proper goodbye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wonder if it counts as a fix-it if a character dies? I mean, he did die to fix the new timeline... and he succeeded.


	7. I Hope I Never Get Sober

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ana Amari survives a bullet to the head, and finds that the world has changed in her absence.
> 
> Epilogue.

The last thing Ana remembers is going blind.

Agony, enough to make anyone go blind, like acid in her eye, before crippling pressure burst inside of her skull. There was a brief realization that she would die, before the darkness took her. Instead of dying, she drifts between the waking world, and the world of dreams.

She dreams of terrible slack-jawed beasts, covered in horns and spikes, endlessly hungry. In the way of dreams, she knows that they hunt only the innocent, but will viciously tear apart any in their path. She is surrounded by innocents, cowering in terror, but she cannot move and even if she could, she does not have a weapon with which to fight them. She looks around, desperately searching for anything to use. But the streets are empty of all but beasts and prey…  
And her young, kind Fareeha stepping in to face them. She tries to stop her. Yells to no avail. Fareeha is fierce and determined and stubborn, she will not listen to the words of her old mother. She will not save herself. She manages to uproot her legs, but too late. Fareeha is caught in the jaws of a beast and torn apart. 

Fighting a battle that was never hers. 

Ana could not save her… 

She briefly surfaces in the waking world, her vision blurred and halved, and sees her old friend Amad speaking with a doctor. Their faces are grim.

*

Hours pass into days, weeks, and months. Ana does not know this when she first wakes up; is only told later in a conversation with Amad. He tells her of what has happened while she slept. Of a bullet to her mechanical eye, of a cracked orbital socket and skull, of a surgery and a coma. He tells her that she has died… at least, in the eyes of the world. In order to keep her safe, he has kept her hidden. He tells her of Talon plants inside Overwatch, and not knowing who could be trusted. 

She closes her one remaining eye and prays for sleep.

*

When she wakes again there is a very familiar man sitting by her bedside, a man who she now knows should not be there. She cannot coax sound from her throat, no matter how hard she tries. But she does not try to return to sleep, for this is too important – Jack Morrison’s presence can only mean lies, or change. She prays that it is not the former. Amad has been a steady friend.

Eventually Jack notices that she is awake. His eyes no longer moving across the endless text on his phone and instead snapping up and finding hers. The sense of a soldier is a formidable thing; Ana knows well, the feeling of eyes watching her. Jack’s entire expression melts into relief once he sees that she’s awake.

“Ana,” he says, fondly. “I’m glad you’re up. I heard you were in a bit of a coma.”

Ana still cannot respond. It only takes a moment for Jack to realize this, and to guess at the cause, for he quickly moves to help give her ice chips from a nearby cup.

“Thank you,” she says, though her voice is still little more than a hoarse whisper, it will suffice. “How are you here? Is Fareeha okay?”

“She’s fine, perfectly fine, no need to worry!”

Ana gives him the best ‘unimpressed’ stare she can manage from a hospital bed. It is likely not very impressive in itself, but Jack, as always, quails beneath it. He’s likely only humoring her, but it is still sweet, nonetheless. 

“She… uh… she just recently joined the Egyptian military,” he confesses. “But you don’t need to worry, last I heard, she’s doing very well, **very** well actually, top cadet, and she’s perfectly fine. We told her and Sam about finding you, and they’re both looking forward to seeing you again.”

For one moment every muscle in Ana’s body seems to tense, because no, this is not what she wanted, not at all. How could she have put them through so much grief, they must surely hate her for it. And Jack Morrison had **no right** to tell them she lived, to tell **her** secrets. And of course Fareeha went against her express wishes and decided to fight in _someone else’s war_. And then, as quickly as it had come, the tension leaves. This anger is misplaced. And she cannot hold this against Jack, for he was only doing his best.

Jack, for his part, only sits patiently through her flare of emotions. Ana would thank him for it, if it did not mean acknowledging her lack of control. And also, she is still a bit angry with him.

She moves to speak again, to demand further explanation, but something in his expression stops her. It is aching tiredness, and also, perhaps, something like regret.

“Tell me everything,” she demands.

Jack grimaces, and then he sighs, and then he acquiesces. “Well you see, it started when Jesse McCree traveled back in time…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to explore a bit about Ana's character, particularly about disagreeing with her daughter's desire to fight, and the bit about her not wanting to tell people she loved that she was still alive.
> 
> This chapter was just so much easier to write than any of the others; I do not know why. It was also originally going to be Chapter 6, but after writing it I felt that it fit better at the end. So I ended up releasing two chapters at once!
> 
> Also, for those curious about my References (if anyone is at all):  
> About Comas: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coma/


End file.
